Why is it not more frequent to discharge the energy back out onto, say, the shields, the way DS9 did in "Civil Defense"? Or into space, if the shields weren't up at the time? Might this not be preferable to exploding consoles?

I believe that Flashover is correct, in that a battle situation deals with inconceivable amounts of energy. However, I would envision a Borg-inspired diffusion net that could reroute some (if not all) of the released energy back into the shield capacitors or phaser arrays.

Why is it not more frequent to discharge the energy back out onto, say, the shields, the way DS9 did in "Civil Defense"? Or into space, if the shields weren't up at the time? Might this not be preferable to exploding consoles?

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Timing. They knew they were going to get a massive power surge, and they had enough time to set up a bypass to dump all the power outside.

^Yes. Exactly. It's not that the ships don't have defenses against these things, it's that no defense is completely infallible. Every form of protection can be overwhelmed if its limitations are exceeded.

I think the problem, though, is that the modern Trek shows and movies have made exploding/sparking consoles into such a routine element of battle scenes that it gives the impression that there are no defenses.

What about transistors? As of now, they're just easy-to-melt metals, but I would imagine that by the 24th century the Federation would have come up with some kind of viscous liquid conductor which reacts with the material of which the wire casing is made to form a hyperinsulating gas.

I mean, it would be similar to burning wood, sort of. C (s) reacts with heat and O (g) to form CO (g).

Similarly, if we let the viscous liquid used in the wiring be X, and let the material of the inner tubing of the wires be Y, then X (l) reacts with heat and Y (s) to form XY (g).

In other words, the inner wiring would turn into gas as soon as too much power is flowing through it, say, 25 megawatts (i.e. for example, 5000 V * 5000 A).

So, if this kind of transistor were to be inserted into every wire going into and out of the shield systems and hull, no panels would explode.

And since there are replicators, it can be synthesised at no cost, and wouldn't affect the building of the ship.

Of course, there could be several problems, eg. the viscous liquid might be very corrosive, or extremely toxic, but I'd say the likelihood of that is relatively low.

I was goaded into joining this forum by a fellow Trekker after I explained to him in extreme detail how surge-protectors and insulator devices fail under heavy loads. I used the example of the Exploding Consoles Of Doom from Star Trek to make my point.

The insulator devices I manufacture have a certain rating that we call the flashover rating. On paper we need to maintain a specific sized gap between the power line and the support structure. This way a surge induced by lightening or a transformer switching error won't jump from the line to the pole. If that happens, the surge can damage other devices like telecommunication devices, switches, street-lamps... and in extreme cases it can destroy the support structure.

We're talking about ratings of up to 35,000 volts during "normal operation..." During a lightening-induced surge the the voltage can increase to well over 300,000 volts.

Our product is designed to prevent an arc from forming, and if it does it is deigned to burn away forming a quenching and non-conductive gas that immediately arrests the arc.

What you are seeing when a console explodes is the failure of the insulators and surge protectors. Just like the product I work with, Starfleet Issue Protective Isolators would have a maximum rating.

During combat, lets face it... both sides are slinging massive amounts of power around trying to make the opposing side explode. Eventually one or more isolators are going to be overwhelmed and an arc is going to jump between the power-carrying components of the ship and the frame... and all that power has to go somewhere.

Sometimes it dissipates harmlessly, other times it causes things to fail catastrophically. Frankly given the power levels we are talking about I'm surprised there aren't more internal explosions.

Now for whatever reason nameless guest-extras seem to attract these surges... I am trying to isolate this property and incorporate it in our Generation IV design. I think it has more to do with blood-thirsty writers, Screen Actor Guild contracts and the VFX department more than any physical property.... however testing is ongoing as I speak.

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Makes perfect sense. Thanks for this explanation!

I guess this would also explain that the starboard power coupling has a flashover rating of zero, then.

Why is it not more frequent to discharge the energy back out onto, say, the shields, the way DS9 did in "Civil Defense"? Or into space, if the shields weren't up at the time? Might this not be preferable to exploding consoles?

All electronic devices are powered by smoke of various colors. If you put too much power into said devices the smoke will be displaced and the device will stop working.

Also happens if you reverse the polarity.

Good example would be that old Athlon 1800+ chip I destroyed this afternoon. I was overclocking it, and I turned up the Vcore voltage too high, and sure enough the smoke came out. Without that smoke the chip is useless.